Downpatrick farmer backs new eco-farming campaign

Downpatrick farmer backs new eco-farming campaign

17 January 2018

DOWNPATRICK farmer John Carson has joined more than 100 farmers to form a new nature friendly farming network.

The new grouping, which was launched at the Real Farming conference in Oxford last week, wants to see more support for sustainable farming.

The network has called on the UK and devolved governments to create a post-Brexit framework to help farmers restore wildlife, reverse declines in soil quality and help manage the impacts of climate change, as well as growing affordable, healthy food.

Mr Carson, whose family has been farming at Ballyrenan outside Downpatrick for more than six decades, said nature and the environment have played key roles in farming down through the generations.

“Essentially what we are trying to do is champion the good work of farmers of the past and those of  the future. Years ago, there were many labourers on farms to maintain stone walls and look after fences and the birds and the bees,” he said.

“Now, it is down to a one-man operation in many cases and we are going to have to employ people to do this. UK environment minister Michael Gove is right when he says money is going to have to come into agricultural for this sort of work.”

Last week, Mr Gove outlined plans for how farming subsidies in England might work post-Brexit with payments made to farmers who work to protect and enhance the environment.

But with no Stormont Executive currently in place, it is unclear whether similar proposals would be implemented in Northern Ireland.

The Department of Agriculture insists this will be a decision for a future minister, but Mr Carson says many farmers in Northern Ireland are already working to protect the landscape.

He said: “The environment and agriculture since I started farming have always been linked together and that will not change.

“That is why the new friendly farming network wants to do its best to champion at least 97 per cent of farmers out there who are farming in a fairly sustainable and environmental way, even if it is only looking after hedgerows and growing crops.

“Farmers can grow crop and bird cover, leave stubble ground and look after soil. If it was not for that four inches of soil we would have bother surviving.”

The new network believes that while thousands of farmers already use nature friendly farming practices, the scale of the decline in wildlife and soil quality and the challenges presented by climate change meant this work had to be scaled up rapidly with strong policy support.

The organisation believes Brexit presents a “once in a generation opportunity” to create a new farming policy that will help farms evolve and thrive and, at the same time, help restoring and protecting the natural heritage.

Mr Carson and the other network members are confident there is an opportunity to create a long-term, stable policy framework that will drive a mainstream shift towards a sustainable, productive, nature-friendly future for British farming as well as protecting the landscape across the UK.

Three years ago, the Carson family switched to organic farming and now keeps suckler cows and beef cattle, grows cereals and manages 16 acres of newly planted trees.

Mr Carson concedes the transition has not been easy, with the soil taking a year or two so to adjust, but he believes the farm is feeling the benefit.

“There has been an increase in wildlife and I firmly believe farming and the environment can go hand in hand,” he said.

“This has been the case through generations. All we are doing is carrying on the work of those who have gone before us. You can still be green and continue farming in a sustainable, profitable way.”